Among the asphodels, warnings
of a killing mind.  Bats, incendiary

bombs as cargo, bleed the enemy
(any on the side of a different yes).

Night swallows its stars that once
delivered mercy before sleep.

No longer sing the glass world.
New trumpets must wake the dead.

Some say, too late.  Some wash windows
to look from the outside in.  A woman

combs her long black hair and waits.
There is fruit enough and he will come.


Author Bio:
Peggy Aylsworth's poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals throughout the U.S. and abroad, including Poetry Salzburg Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The MacGuffin. Her work was nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prize by The Medulla Review.

Outdoors, over the adobe wall,
bath towels swathed wet, unmatched--
orange-sherbet, rose-pink, palm-green—
97 degrees, hung to dry.
A jug of sun-brewed tea glistens golden
on the apricot wall in-between
cotton fabrics wet-washed, sun-dried.

Ms. Making-Do
plucks sun-hot tomatoes,
synchronized with sunflowers
sag sagging.
Ms. sells jars of Hatch
green chile, X-hot, in salsa red
to desert warm regulars.
Praises concoction as homeopathic,
hot weather remedy for lurid souls.

Along the rundown sidewalk,
crawling ants and weed-filled cracks,
zebra sheets drape a ramshackle fence.
They are dry as the shriveled nopales
lining the alleyway, where
sounds of a familiar
boot squash Tecate cans echo—
cash for aluminum recycled,
coins for tortillas at Amigos
Incorporated.

Sweat wet guy zips by,
pedals blue bicycle salvaged from dump.
Lilac fabric softener midair whacks
the cycler’s face as he belts out the vintage
tune: “I want to ride my bicycle;
I want to ride it where I like.”

At sidewalk’s turn
squatters wipe their bums with newspaper,
bent behind jamocha brown sofa
abandoned in a field.

Anyone could be there
anyone could be on metal springs springing
like scorpion stingers from furniture once serene.


Author Bio:
Wendy Sue Gist was born in California, raised in Northern Arizona. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Dark Matter Journal, Burningword Literary Journal, New Plains Review, Oyez Review, Pif Magazine, Rio Grande Review, RipRap, Sundog Lit, The Chaffey Review, The Fourth River, Tulane Review and other fine journals.

“A situation has not been satisfactorily liquidated…
until we have achieved, not merely an outward
reaction through our movements, but also an
inward reaction….”
Pierre Janet, Psychological Healing

Psychological healing is achieved
when our past is understood and resolved
so crippling trauma is relieved

Child and marital abuse lack recognition,
victims are called ungrateful, blamed
for upsetting family position

Adopted daughters should express gratitude,
wives think of family before all--
questioning’s not an acceptable attitude

So how do women stop post-traumatic stress
and be healed by liquidating the past
with covert incest rarely addressed?

Who do we tell what happened for resolution
and keep terror in the past---
there must be some solution

Perhaps you’ll agree the problem is vast
and will pardon a woman who asked


Author Bio:
Carol Smallwood began writing poetry after she retired. Lily's Odyssey (print novel 2010) published with permission by All Things That Matter Press. Its first chapter was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award in Best New Writing. http://www.amazon.com/Lilys-Odyssey-Carol-Smallwood/dp/0984098453

I stand tall and brown skinned like the great iroko tree
My hair black like cooking charcoal and kinky
My teeth white and my lips thick and red like ripe cherries
My body voluptuous and supple.
I am beautiful
I am proud to be an African daughter.

My beautiful Africa, my motherland
Your beauty and riches takes my breath away.
I love to feel your rich soil with my fingers
As your cool breeze caresses my skin
And your rich produce gives me strength
As you suckle me.

My beautiful Africa
The land of my great father and fathers before
And also of mother and mothers before me.
I am proud to be a part of your beautiful offspring
This is where I belong, and here I will always dwell.
So, dear stranger,
Do not preach to me about the civilization you know nothing about.
Who says to be civilized, I have to be like someone else?

Does it make me primitive
Because I love to feel the soil of my motherland with my bare feet
Drink water from your pure chemical-free spring
Feel your rain upon my naked flesh
Stand upon your rocks as I worship my God
Swim in your streams
And bask in the warmth of your sun
As I grow strong and healthy? 
Then I accept your ignorance, oh stranger.

Who are you,
Oh stranger,
O civilized one,
As you make an effort to make me who I am not?
Because you have done your best
To be who and what you are not.

A true daughter of Africa, I am.
And that is who I will always be,
An African daughter.


Author Bio:
"I am an old-fashioned woman who loves God, knowledge and documenting daily life, culture and women’s issues through words and pictures."  Ooluss Louisa Ibhaze started writing at a very early age with her friends and sisters as my proofreaders. She loves the ability to create characters and make them do what she wants. Coming from a family with many women, growing up was fun as there was always something to gossip and argue about. Her writing is greatly influenced by spirituality, passion for African culture and tradition, gender and life experiences. If given the opportunity to come back to the world as an animal, she would come back as an eagle. She holds an Msc in Medical Sociology, a second Msc in Globalization and Development and a BSc in Sociology and Anthropology. She has one published novel, a number of magazine and online publications, and a blog. She also has online journals on the World Pulse Project, Naija Stories and African Writer. She has recently completed her first poetry collection titled "Winds Of My Sahara." When she is not writing, she indulges in her other passions, which are taking pictures and traveling.

1886 my torch was lit - too dim
to enlighten the world,
151 feet below men fear a liberty crush,
while the few courageous enough to be offended
charter a distant view of freedom
over undulating waves of top hats,

hold on tight against the sway and speak of equal rights,
those proclaimed free in 1863 dare say,
“shove [me] the Bartholdi statue, torch and all, into the ocean until…” (1)

I stand for freedom? I covet freedom.
It burns a red gold, like my new forged skin.
My tabula ansata evokes legal rights,
only holds a date, no written law to secure my fate
– although there is room.

There was fire before me. Verrazano, Walloons,
1712 slaves set Maiden Lane ablaze,
1741 Burton conspiracy, 13 burn at stake,
1848 – Declarations of Sentiments –
72 years before the right to count, lifetimes.
I have seen my city burn. My people burn.

Shirtwaist sweatshop, Asch Building, 23-29 Washington Place
locked doors to prevent unauthorized breaks,
146 perish, 129 women aged 14 to 42
Providenza Panno, Rosaria Maltese, 9 hour days $7 a week,
“…girl after girl…ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street,” (2)
2 years later Lucy Burns took her turn
to stoke the slow embers of right versus wrong,
hand of the law is often strong against the weak.

1972 congress passed ERA (drafted 1923 by Alice Paul)
Equality of rights under the law.
She died in 1977. It died in 1982
smoldering through failed ratification.

I’m the mother of exiles,
liberty enlightening the world,
but I am too large for men – immense in scale.
I was made in pieces, 200 crates. Agonizing unveil.
My arm was first, face second, the rest at an unsettled pace.
Exposition, fair, blood, sweat and wail, helped cast me to my place.
Suffrage,
suffering,
rage, silence,
or lie about truth,
hope, engage,
ticker tape parade,
Edouard Rene de Laboulaye,
copper skin beaten repoussé,
curtain wall flounced over iron truss bones.
400,000 more women than men in New York City alone.
108 mayors:
1 black.
women none.


1 The Cleveland Gazette
2 Louis Waldman


Author Bio:
Kim graduated from the School of Journalism at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Her career in advertising has encompassed the positions of media buyer, account representative, and brand manager. She currently resides in Richmond, Virginia. She is a member of James River Writers and the Poetry Society of Virginia. Three young children, two crazy Westies, and one husband in retail, occupy her time when she is not writing short stories or working on a novel. Her poetry captures the madness and keeps her sane.

Two of her poems will be published in the July and August issues of Ascent Aspirations and a short story in the next issue of Circa, a journal of historical fiction.

The last house on the street overlooked the city’s
midriff: a hollow corpus of denuded beige hills
surrounded by restless traffic, engraved with paths
for cheap motorcycles, camel trains and beggars.

In the spring winds, dust gathered on the naked floors
As cottony balls under the chairs and I never dusted,
Never swept, watched them converge deep in the corners
Crowding like drift ice on a thawing river. Rather I was
Obsessed with escaping the locked door, my bedroom prison.

Too far to jump, I sat on the balcony above the desert writing
Naked poems in my ragged notebook, crying, plotting, sleepless
And hungry, begging. Nights I lay on the bare cement, listening
For his footsteps approaching in the hall as the dust collected
Outside, ignoring it each time I left for work in the mornings.


Author Bio:
Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry. Over 100 of her poems appear in dozens of online venues and in anthologies. The natural world is generally her framework; she often focuses on the tension between nature and humanity, using concrete images to illuminate the loss of meaning between them. She is a semi-retired teacher living in California.

I know what they think, they think I'm gonna ask them if they want fries with that. But I'm not. Half the time I don't even have to ask them anything. People just open their mouths and talk. Then I give them their total, take their money and give them their change. Sometimes they tell me to keep it. But Corey tells me I gotta ask if they want three cookies for a dollar. If they wanted three cookies they would ask for them, but they don't. But since Cory's watching I ask. I ask the old lady who drives up and orders a breakfast sandwich. I ask the woman who just wants an extra-large sweet tea, half cut. I ask the old pervert who comes in every morning and gets the senior coffee and spends the next three hours drinking free refills. And I ask the older man with the gentle eyes. And he says yes. I ask the cute construction guy who stops every morning before work. And he stutters for a minute then he says yes. In an hour's time I've sold 18 cookies. I sold cookies to the mother with the screaming kids in the back seat. And I sold three cookies to the pimply-faced guy who can’t make eye contact. So I tell Corey how people just kept buying cookies and he doesn't act surprised. Then I say something to Ethan who’s not surprised either “That's why you're up front and not making the sandwiches,” Ethan tells me. “It's cause you’re young and pretty and horny boys will always tell you yes.”



Author Bio:
Lisa Hossler lives along the shore of Lake Erie. She is an addictive reader. She tried to get help for her problem, but the therapist only gave her some pamphlets to read.  She works in a library, hoping no one will notice her addiction, reading on the sly, checking out books to herself, hoarding them at home. One day, while reading a Bob Woodward book, Lisa began to take notes, copying down Mr. Woodward’s phrases, and studying his writing style. She began to assemble phrases into different contexts. Over time she developed her own writing style. She writes from home, trying to incorporate the lives of the people she sees. 

How much is the soul worth?

We see through cost of stone - 

The last of chemo treatments,

the wait between The Calls. 

Sometimes things do not add up

to the correct amount of change.

Three generations of women – 

wearing polka dots around a breakfast table. 

How much did this cost us?

Grandmother took the bill. 

A last breakfast, 
worth the weight of all the gold. 

Can you ask someone to put their life aside,

to stand by and watch you die?

But what is real love without the threat of death?

We’ve become brittle and bitter with time. 

Waited a lifetime to ask the questions - 

What is the meaning?
Where is the line?

Do we pay with cash or karma? 

Can we trade lives for lives?


Author Bio:
Megan Harris is a poet, blogger, feminist, and historian from Youngstown, Ohio. She has been previously published in Birmingham Arts Journal, The Jenny, The Penguin Review, and Ascent Aspirations.